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Comment by GregBuchholz | Hacker News Reader

>Something that struck me about this article -- and something which I see regularly around CNC hobbyists -- is the unfamiliarity with basic machining calculations

...do you have a recommendation or two for books/resources for learning about machining?

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I've found the best machining resource is working with a good machinist. Quite a bit of machining is about intuition and properly evaluating other sensory inputs - knowing how to interpret the sound a cutting tool makes is critical! Unfortunately, finding a good machinist willing to let you watch them in person - or better yet, work under their supervision - is pretty hard, especially if you're just a hobbyist. Crotchety old-timers don't scale particularly well...

Youtube is one of the better resources right now, for anything other than really basic calculations. There seems to be a trend of old-school professional machinists documenting jobs they're working on - sort of a cross between a tutorial and virtual job-shadowing. Some nice users include oxtoolco, KEF791, Abom79, and mrpete222.

Bang on true. As I noted elsewhere, that semester of night courses at the local JC has improved my machining abilities drastically, as well as illuminated me as to actually planning the order of operations (y'know, "step 1: bandsaw", etc).

msds and hoprocker hit it on the head. In this field, I think the best way to learn is to still go in and work with an expert and get your hands dirty.

That said, an introductory book that the local community college just recently started using (before that, there really was no book, just blueprints and notes because so much information came from the instructors) is the Precision Machining Technology [0].

Unfortunately, like many textbooks, it's not cheap. But it's a nice introductory book("I don't have a clue, but I'm interested in the topic")

[0]http://www.amazon.com/Precision-Machining-Technology-Peter-H...

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